Creative Strategy: Planning
and Development
Advertising Creativity
• Creative Strategy Determining what the advertising message
will say or communicate
• Creative Tactics Determining how the message strategy will
be executed
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Advertising Creativity
• Advertising Creativity: The ability to generate fresh, unique and
appropriate ideas that can be used as solutions to communication
problems
• Two perspectives on advertising creativity
• Suits
• “Its not creative unless it sells”
• Poets
• “Artistic/ aesthetic value and originality”
Inputs to the Creative Process
• Preparation/ Incubation/ Illumination
• General Preparation Input
• Books, periodicals, trade publications, clipping services, journals, magazines
etc.
• Trends, developments in marketplace
• Product Specific Pre Planning Input
• Qualitative and Quantitative studies
• Problem detection studies
• Focus groups
• Ethnographic studies
Directed Focus Groups
• A directed focus group is a structured and guided group discussion
that aims to gather information from a target audience on a specific
topic.
• A trained facilitator leads the group, and participants are encouraged to
share their opinions freely
Message Communication Studies
• Message communication in advertising is the strategic process of
creating and refining the content of an advertisement to communicate
effectively with a target audience. It involves:
• Identifying key messages
• Crafting persuasive language
• Determining the tone and style
• Striking a balance between information, emotion, and
involvement level
Portfolio Test
• A portfolio test is a pre-testing method for advertisements that
involves showing a group of respondents a portfolio of different
versions of an ad and then asking them to recall which ones they can
remember.
• Portfolio tests are often used to test variations in headlines, copy, or
graphics. They are one of the most common methods for pre-testing
print advertising.
Viewer Reaction Profile
• A Viewer Response Profile (VRP) is a technique for measuring how
consumers react to TV commercials. It's a tool that's often used in
advertising research, both in academic and commercial settings
What is a Story Board?
• A panel or series of panels on which a set of sketches is arranged
depicting consecutively the important changes of scene and action in a
series of shots
Advertising Campaign
• Advertising campaign, is a set of interrelated and coordinated
marketing communication activities that center on a single theme or
idea that appears in different media across a specified time period
• Campaign Theme
• The central message that will be communicated in all of the various
IMC activities:
• BMW “The Ultimate Driving Machine”
• Chevy Trucks “Like a Rock”
Advertising Campaign
• Dastak Banaspati
Oil: World Food Day # Food Wastage # Zero Hunger
• [Link]
• Unilever Ad Campaign: # Kam se Kam takhwa guzaray laiq nahin
jeenay laiq honi chahiye
• [Link]
Advertising Campaign
• Model Steel Advertisement: # Building Bonds the foundation of
home
• [Link]
• Major selling theme is our steel is as strong as the bonds that keep a
family together
• Paisa Bazaar Ad: #Story of a Father and a Son
• [Link]
Unique Selling Proposition
• Each advertisement must make a proposition to the
consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not
just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must
say to each reader: “Buy this product and you will get this
benefit.”
• The proposition must be one that the competition either
cannot or does not offer. It must be unique either in the
brand or in the claim.
• The proposition must be strong enough to move the mass
millions, that is, pull over new customers to your brand.
Creating a Brand Image
• The creative strategy used to sell these products is
based on the development of a strong, memorable
identity for the brand through image advertising.
• Image advertising has become increasingly popular
and is used as the
• main selling idea for a variety of products and services,
including soft
• drinks, cigarettes, cars, airlines, financial services,
perfume/ colognes, and clothing
• [Link]
Positioning
• The basic idea is that advertising is used to establish or
“position” the product or service in a particular place in
the consumer’s mind. Positioning is done for companies
as well as for brands.
• Products can be positioned on the basis of product
attributes, price/quality, usage or application, product
users, or product class.
• Any of these can spark a major selling idea that becomes
the basis of the creative strategy and results in the
brand’s occupying a particular place in the minds of the
target audience.
Finding the Inherent Drama
• The inherent drama approach expresses the advertising
philosophy of Leo Burnett, founder of the Leo Burnett
agency in Chicago. Burnett said inherent-drama “is
often hard to find but it is always there, and once found
it is the most interesting and believable of all
advertising appeals.”
• He believed advertising should be based on a
foundation of consumer benefits with an emphasis on
the dramatic element in expressing those benefit
• [Link]